FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX
Comments
poulpy123
buran77
The three companies mentioned have together maybe up to 50k employees (quick internet search, don't quote me on that). 11 of them (various roles, some out of the game for years) dying or going missing over many years in a country with a pretty high criminality and suicide rates rates doesn't sound very surprising.
tomjakubowski
annual suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100k, murder is ~5 per 100k. so from a cohort of 50k people, we'd expect about 9 to die from one or the other per year. and these 11 deaths under investigation were over 4 years. so, yeah: my suspicion is that nothing special is happening here.
the big grain of salt: this doesn't take into account the differences in social and economic demographics of researchers and suicide + homicide victims. I'd suspect scientists skew wealthy and are less likely than average to be victims of suicide or homicide, but I don't know.
ineedasername
Out of 50k people? These specific of backgrounds and scenarios of their death/disappearence?
No. That is surprising. Any statistics you'd find about the rates of any one or more of these kinds of disappearances are going to be population level, averaged out over groups that are much higher risk and therefore skew the average rates to seem higher than their priors actually dictate for many sub populations, eg, working professionals at large corporations of this specific type.
Surprising != something actually being connected, but it sure as hell is surprising and isn't something to dismiss as "well, law of large numbers so ::shrug::"
buran77
> No. That is surprising.
I'm genuinely curious if you found any data to support it especially when you add JPL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, Caltech, and the Kansas City National Security Campus to the list, over four years.
And what puts an even bigger question mark on the whole thing is that the FBI embarked on this whole thing after being asked by members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform when they read about it in the newspaper. How critical are these people and how surprising their final fate if the US needs a tabloid to ring the alarm?
MagicMoonlight
They’re also some of the most strategically valuable companies if you are say an evil country that wants to build long range nuclear missiles or advance your space programme.
fp64
I also don't think there's anything to it, but do not forget that any serious state-level actor with the means and interest to remove such people also has the means and interest to cover it up. IIRC there are manuals how to drive somebody into a desperate situation so they don't see a way out (Stasi in GDR), or manipulate any of their acquaintances in a similar manner, and you have a huge amount of the weirdest drugs available to help with that.
JKCalhoun
Yeah, Devil's Triangle level of coincidence.
nickandbro
A lot of people are saying it’s disconnected, but even if it was, if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by
pj_mukh
Could be nothing, or could be a new Havana Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome
What's sad is, 5-10 years ago, no adversary would think simply off-ing American scientists was effective strategy, America was a new scientist generation machine.
Now thanks to Research funding falling off a cliff and massive immigration restrictions, this is no longer true.
King-Aaron
Amy Eskridge - who publicly stated she was not suicidal before "committing suicide" reported to her friends that she received burns to her arms and hands through her window in an attack that sounded similar to this microwave/havana syndrome stuff. She was very vocal about the fact that she was being harassed over her work before she died.
blks
She is also not a scientists, but some weird grifter with her “Institute of Exotic Science” and “antigravity” paper.
thatguy0900
Sounds like the exact person we should be concerned about getting hit with scifi weapons to be honest
ineedasername
I mean, sort of? Let's put aside whatever she claims to have been working on. Then, consider, if there is a group of people more likely to be attacked by odd advanced weapons? Probably people whose work puts them into contact with with or near research into odd and exotic things. If someone was murdered in their NYC apartment and a schizophrenic neighbor claimed it was a wild tiger then sure, you'd take that with some salt. If you then found out the deceased worked at the zoo? Well...
PoignardAzur
> Amy Eskridge - who publicly stated she was not suicidal before "committing suicide"
I really hate the discourse around this stuff. Like, yes, disguising murder as suicide is a thing and obviously three-letters agencies do it.
But someone saying publicly they're not suicidal gives you close to zero information. People with suicidal ideation almost never advertise it publicly because, one, there is a heavy amount of social stigma attached to it, and two, publicly declaring you're suicidal is a good way to get involuntarily committed to a mental health institution.
I see a ton of jokes on social media that go "remember, X is not suicidal". How the fuck would you know? This discourse is so disrespectful to people struggling with suicidal thoughts.
pwdisswordfishs
Subjectively, it seems like it's even prudent to consider that someone who is involved in a discussion about whether or not they're suicidal is probably likelier than average to commit suicide. Fair chance that "I'm not suicidal" should really even be understood to mean, "I'm not suicidal right now".
ineedasername
It's a little different when the person is saying "I've received threats, so if you hear something happens to me, I did NOT kill myself!"
Then, you know, bringing up suicide and it being a warning sign they're about to? The odds have shifted a bit.
ineedasername
They publicly said they were receiving threats. And that if something happened to them, don't believe it's suicide. That's a bit different than just, you know, saying it at random, or because someone asked you how you're doing.
tasuki
It's respectful to trust someone who says they're not suicidal. Saying "they could've been suicidal anyway" is disrespectful to people who aren't suicidal and are telling the truth.
If someone is struggling with suicidal thoughts and is publicly lying about it, they shall not have my respect anyway: I'm ok with being disrespectful to them.
poulpy123
She was also very visibly delusional for years
redsocksfan45
[dead]
willis936
Havana Syndrome seems to be a CIA psyop to soften the US public to warhawk policy. The proposed mechanism is... magic. Incredible stuff.
harddrivereque
Speaking in layman's terms, it's fancy remote microwaving.
willis936
No, it's not. There was one hasty study that claimed that early on, riddled with issues, and unable to be replicated. The symptoms are not RF burns.
CGMthrowaway
Source? It is known (and studied) that even at low power levels that do not significantly raise body temperature, short RF pulses can cause rapid, microscopic thermal expansion in the brain. This creates mechanical stress waves that can lead to TBIs
quietsegfault
That's the cool thing! No one really knows, so any remotely scientific theory is indistinguishable from truth. Maybe even the more outlandish the better, so as to scare people more effectively.
CGMthrowaway
Did you mean to reply to a different comment? Struggling to connect this reply with what was said before it
anxman
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-military-tested-device-that-...
Things have changed. The weapon was acquired by DOD.
krunck
"...the importance of the energy being pulsed in order to have biological effects on humans. When you produce pulses like this, you can actually stimulate electrically active tissue like brain tissue and the heart, for that matter, mimicking what the brain normally does, but now you're driving it with your pulses from the outside."
Ah, so a portable pulsed microwave device. Current phased array technology is certain to be able to produce a narrow and powerful beam. Current energy densities of batteries allow for a significant amount of portable power. Expecting to see "Show HN" on this soon...
mc32
It’s been going on since the Obama admin. Could be longer. Purportedly a unit was smuggled out of some former Soviet republic and we now have a copy of the actual device. When tested on animals, the device produced injuries in alignment with those experienced by US foreign service personnel.
It’s been a great source of fodder for conspiracy theorists though.
yencabulator
> simply off-ing
What if they're interrogated in an attempt to extract something very specific? The deaths could be kidnappings gone wrong.
Cytobit
So it could be nothing or it could be nothing?
Bombthecat
Or it could be something
X-Files music plays
bko
[flagged]
rho138
Awww your data drops off at 2023. You’re so smart.
poulpy123
What could have happened after 2023 ? It's a real mystery!
bko
> CRS calculated that President Trump's budget proposal for FY2026 included approximately $181.4 billion for R&D, $10.7 billion (-6%) below the FY2025 estimated level of $192.2 billion. The requested $181.4 billion, which included advance and supplemental appropriations, was to support federal investments in the conduct of R&D as well as R&D-related physical assets (such as the construction of R&D facilities or equipment).
181 billion! How will we prosper as a nation if we go back to 2021 spending levels??
trhway
Lets say an American scientist in a strategic area was offered a boatload of money (or some other piece of mice) from China or similar. Legally probably he can move, though export control probably applies to the brain content too. How sure the said scientist would be that he isn't going to have a car accident? Gerald Bull would have a word on it. So, "disappear" may start to look like an attractive alternative. A related example - Russia has put a bunch of top hypersonic missile related scientists into prison for supposedly working with China (and may be they worked, though official charges have so far been obviously fabricated - like for publishing in a journal of an research article on a non-secret project with that article making all the typical rounds for months through peer-review, etc) as well as making a law giving FSB full control over any scientific interaction between domestic and foreign scientists and institutions.
I suppose the top AI talent may become subjects of a similar game.
b112
It doesn't have to be China or Russia. As others have mentioned, the current political climate in the US is... "weird". At least, as an outsider, I just don't know how else to describe it. It's like watching/listening to gibberish.
So I can imagine American allies recruiting scientists en-mass, to protect themselves from America. The US has currently demonstrated a desire to take over allies completely (Canada, Greenland), and I'm sure few know who may be next. Some scientists may have simply wished to move abroad, and also, have quite valuable skills which are restricted in some way, hence them "disappearing".
Melatonic
Or the scientists and engineers themselves are wanting out of the US and were offered secret offers to "dissapear" and live elsewhere under a new identity
brador
We’ve just looped back to the first idea this brain dump came up with.
trhway
>to protect themselves from America.
not necessarily from America. The goal #1 of the US dominated NATO for example was to prevent Germany from getting nuclear weapons in exchange for protection by US. Now with US de-facto withdrawing, Germany would have to quickly get nukes (as well as missiles to carry them) - i don't see other option for Germany here giving the environment in Europe and MidEast. So they would also need such scientists. South Korea, Japan, Australia seem to be in the similar situation too. (and everybody understands that a nuclear weapons program can't be a long multi-year endeavor - somebody will try to stop you - and so it must be very fast once started, and thus you have to have ready-to-use skills and knowledge)
greedo
Keeping the FRG from getting nukes wasn't part of NATO strategy. The succinct reason for NATO was to keep the Soviets from marching to the Atlantic. The more pragmatic was expressed as "Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."
trhway
You're overlooking the fact that Europe started 2 World Wars and keeping Europe at peace was a major NATO goal.
greedo
Hence the part about "...the Germans down."
PearlRiver
The whole point of NATO was always to present a united front. Even the slightest HINT of doubt could embolden the enemy to test resolve.
And at this point NATO has pretty much collapsed. Trump turned his back on Ukraine and nobody wants to join operation Epstein Fury.
vasac
> Germany would have to quickly get nukes
No shit? Why would they have to? Is someone ready to nuke them if it turns out they’re no longer under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, or are they some special snowflakes who should have them while Iran (and most other countries) shouldn’t?
trhway
>Is someone ready to nuke them
No. The nukes prevent the aggression even by a conventionally armed aggressor. Nukes ins't to win a war, it is to prevent one. Lets say Germany has successfully repelled Russian tank-and-soldiers invasion - it would still be a devastating thing for Germany which the nukes would help prevent from starting at all.
>are they some special snowflakes who should have them while Iran (and most other countries) shouldn’t?
Yes, i listed those several special snowflakes who were kept safe by the US nukes, and would need their own umbrella with US no longer providing the one. Iran's situation is obviously very different.
vasac
> Iran's situation is obviously very different.
Yes, very different as in 'Our blessed homeland vs their barbarous wastes' meme.
We (and our allies) should have nukes because we want to prevent wars. But no one else should have them, since the situation is obviously very different (we wouldn’t want them to be able to prevent wars).
And I used to think that Little Rocketman was a crazy bastard, but it looks like I was wrong.
trhway
>Yes, very different as in 'Our blessed homeland vs their barbarous wastes' meme.
exactly. Iran's policy declaration of destroying whole countries (US and Israel in this case) and conducting of actual proxy-wars in order to achieve those goals make them barbarians from whom the civilization must be defended.
>we wouldn’t want them to be able to prevent wars
they don't even try. They want nukes to be able to conduct wars.
>And I used to think that Little Rocketman was a crazy bastard, but it looks like I was wrong.
absolutely. For all their tremendous faults, NK uses their nukes for deterrence as they want to genocide their own people in the comfort of personal safety. Whereis ayatollahs are hellbent on waging wars and destruction in order to spread their Islamic Revolution.
arisAlexis
they probably torture them for secrets and kill them
dvh
"Let's stop with the accusations. It was an old cat. He just happen to fall down while we were shooting." -- Adams aebler
laughing_man
True. Whether or not it's coincidental they have to look into it.
King-Aaron
Unfortunately the people 'looking into it' have currently demonstrated that they are incapable of looking into anything in good faith.
laughing_man
You think the FBI won't investigate in good faith?
actionfromafar
Remember, sarcasm on the internet is difficult. Do you think Kash "forgot his safety blanket" Patel will direct FBI in good faith?
laughing_man
Yes, I do, unless the whole thing is made up. Which I doubt.
unethical_ban
Noem was the one who forgot the safety blanket, not Patel. Patel is one of the non-functioning alcoholics.
actionfromafar
Ah Patel was the jacket.
King-Aaron
No, I do not.
slim
it does not pass the smell test, because what's the purpose of communicating about this FBI ongoing investigation ? at best it won't harm the investigation. it's probably propaganda
poulpy123
I'm not sure what you could do, you didn't even notice there was only one rocket scientist in the list.
Zigurd
The problem is that a lot of people not idly sitting by are UFO enthusiasts. They've done their own research.
blks
It’s a list of scientists, admin workers, janitors, assistants, and one person is a pseudoscientific grifter.
poulpy123
And retirees
thisisit
> if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by
The "if" is doing the heavy lifting here. And universe has lot of "ifs". Here's one:
If this was a perfect distraction spun up to distract from Epstein files, it has succeeded and you have been had.
wmf
I don't have the link but someone estimated the number of scientists working in the defense field (it's a lot) and the number of deaths per year you'd expect (over 100). There's probably nothing here. It probably doesn't hurt to have the FBI take a second look at any death of somebody who has a security clearance or is working on export-controlled tech, but OTOH that might be a lot of work.
xbar
Deaths and mysterious deaths are not at all the same. Mysterious deaths and vanishings become increasingly rare the higher up the socio-economic curve you climb.
It is not surprising that the FBI did not detect an actual pattern before now, considering the various ways that the entirety of it spent the entirety of 2025.
platinumrad
Dying while experiencing nature is "mysterious" but also not uncommon among upper-middle class people. I would bet that the average victim of a backpacking or cross-country skiing mishap is wealthier than average.
tarsinge
But that's not how "mysterious" is used here. These scientists did not meet their end during an obvious outdoor activity.
platinumrad
One of them disappeared while hiking with friends. Another two were last seen walking away from home.
ineedasername
Roughly half the people you'd see walking are "walking away from home". It's not a known risk factor. In fact unless they live near "nature" then being seen walking anywhere at all near their home is pretty reasonable evidence that their disappearance, whatever the cause, is less likely to be "Got lost hiking" or similar.
platinumrad
Okay but one of them literally got lost hiking. Two, if you count the cancer researcher that a lot of people online seem to be bundling in for some reason.
cucumber3732842
>Mysterious deaths and vanishings become increasingly rare the higher up the socio-economic curve you climb.
Is it? Or is there just more scrutiny when more important people die?
When someone who ain't worth shit OD's nobody takes allegations that they were murdered seriously. When someone who's worth a lot of money ODs, the "they only bought fine cocaine, their dealer never would have cut that shit" allegations get looked into because "more equal animals" is more of a scale than a binary when it comes to this particular issue.
deathlight
So are you saying that each of these "experts" is not an actual top of field expert but merely one of hundreds of expert cogs (per field!) in a giant machine so vast that of course some of them will crashout, be kidnapped, blackmailed, die outright, agree to a global government psyop, etc? But that's so much less fun, especially when you consider the espionage angle.
bulbar
I believe the probability to die or get missing for a middle aged person is extremely low.
So no, it's not expected that "some of a group of 5.000 Persons" would die or go missing.
poulpy123
Not even expert cogs, only 6 of the 11 are scientists or engineers
zimpenfish
Steven Novella did one[0] - "Well, there are about 2 million researchers in the US. There are about 25 deaths per million people per day in the US, that’s 50 scientists dying each day, or 73,000 scientists over a four year period. Finding 11 that have some vague connection does not seem unusual to me."
He goes into greater detail further down to assuage the "BUT BUT that's genpop not JPL!" whatabouters and does some "how TF are these people connected?" musing.
[0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/whats-with-the-dead-or-m...
littlecranky67
> McCasland, 68, disappeared from his Albuquerque home on Feb. 27 of this year, leaving on foot with only a .38 caliber revolver. [...] Government contractor Steven Garcia, [...] disappeared from Albuquerque in August 2025, last seen on surveillance footage leaving on foot with a handgun.
Not american, so I can't judge if this is a common thing or irregular, but both were last seen carrying firearms as if they'd be thinking someone is after them.
breakpointalpha
Retired USAF Major General McCasland disappearing from his house is probably the most serious.
He was the commander of the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. This would have given him direct oversight of all of the Air Force's most sensitive technology for decades. His intelligence value to a hostile adversary, even retired, is incalculable.
He was an avid hiker and biker in his neighborhood trails, so it's very unlikely that he just got lost.
Left behind were his prescription glasses, along with all his personal electronics (phone and watch).
It's shocking and alarming that there wasn't a full blown military search and rescue operation mounted within hours of his wife calling him in as missing.
How far could a 68 year old man travel on foot within 8 hours?
He was reported missing within three hours of his last contact with his wife.
New Mexico Search and Rescue wasn't dispatched until Sunday, two days later.
Again, why wasn't the DoD tasked to find him at all costs on the same day he went missing, given his knowledge of the Air Force's most sensitive technologies?
Henchman21
> Again, why wasn't the DoD tasked to find him at all costs on the same day he went missing, given his knowledge of the Air Force's most sensitive technologies?
They know where he is and we (the public) don't have a need to know where he is?
My personal theory is: He's offworld with the other non-terrestrial officers Gary McKinnon found :)
actionfromafar
Suicide by gun isn't uncommon either.
littlecranky67
It is probably more uncommon that they leave by foot in New Mexico - I mean where are some 60-year old going to go by foot and shot themselves without their bodies being found.
JKCalhoun
I postulate they simply didn't want to be found at home.
quietsegfault
uhh .. the desert?
AnimalMuppet
On the other hand, if you were non-suicidal and going for a walk in the desert, you might take a gun, to protect you from rattlesnakes, coyotes, javalinas... (or are javalinas just an Arizona thing?)
JetSpiegel
Taking a gun to protect from rattlesnakes? Why not a big stick?
quietsegfault
I might take a gun and some water, but point taken!
cindyllm
[dead]
redsocksfan45
[dead]
himata4113
This appears to be for investigating how many scientist have left the US sponsored by state powers. But this also seems like bad communication on the FBI and perhaps poor publishing.
I think there is some confusion that there are more people going missing and dying in the sector while not outlining that there are more people going missing AND dying.
Or I'm just completely wrong, the only reason why I am making such assumptions because there is more information about this in the ASML case where a whisleblower leaked that china has poached ASML engineers and have given them new identities to work in chip manufacturing sector in china.
Lord-Jobo
The decline in quality of both investigations and information/studies by the FBI over the past year and a half has been extremely noticeable.
This is just not a serious organization anymore, and the lack of such a thing at the federal level leaves us insanely vulnerable to our own criminal operations.
The same thing happened with the IRS even earlier, multiple rounds of intensive they just cannot pursue criminals of a certain type, and the criminals know it. So they can run basically unchecked, looting all of us for billions.
Cytobit
It's hard to believe that this administration would suddenly care about brain drain, after decimating all academic grants and generally exhibiting anti-intellectual behavior.
swed420
True. It seems more likely they're using this to drum up fear of tHe eNEmY to manufacture consent for more conflict.
neurocline
Once I saw “James Comer” I knew I could ignore this.
kelnos
Yeah. Even without that it feels like one of those things where people see something that looks fishy, but given the large number of potential people involved, it's not actually weird at all.
But Comer... oof, it's hard to take seriously anything he focuses on.
But who knows? Broken clocks, twice a day, etc.
JKCalhoun
A clock with no hands though?
;-)
themafia
This is one of those "That's weird. Why are you telling me?" stories.
t0lo
James Coomey
defrost
From article:
Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, sent letters to FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, requesting staff-level briefings no later than April 27.
Not to be confused with James Comey.
t0lo
I read his autobiography. Surely that entitles me to one irrelevant crude sex joke.
defrost
Uhhh, the autobiography of which one though?
As for irrelevant crude sex jokes, go for it if makes any contribution here, I won't be offended, whenever you're ready.
Mashimo
James Coomey
etaweb
It reminds me of The Three-Body Problem novel/series. At the beginning, the police is investigating on multiple suicides by scientists.
pavel_lishin
That part was genuinely the least plausible part of those books to me.
nephihaha
It reminds me of the plot of Alternative 3 where the scientists aren't disappearing, they're moving to Mars.
bawolff
I think its a fairly common plot. Its also the plot of So many steps to death by Agatha Christie.
bawolff
11 people over 4 years doesn't seem like that much. Its not clear to me how big a population that is out of but if its government scientists i assume there are tens of thousands of those if not hundreds of thousands.
Still, FBI should be investigating every suspicious death of people with high level clearence.
redleader55
Statistically, I would look at deaths from that age group among space flight science and compare this "blip" to the p50. I don't think it's easy to say if 11 deaths/disappearances over 4 years is high or not, without looking at the problem this way.
kelnos
Of those who are missing and not dead, I wonder if they are largely not US citizens, or citizens who have strong/stronger ties outside the US. It would not surprise me if people like that have decided to take their talents elsewhere, given the current state of anti-intellectualism in the US.
poulpy123
I don't think that the one who left by foot with a gun without money or phone planed to go abroad
frcadwaladyr
mmooss
The article doesn't seem to reveal the source of its information about these alleged disappearances. Is it the letters from the members of Congress?
Also, what interest would a foreign power have in planetary defense against asteroids? Is there some dual-use technology in that?
snowwrestler
“Planetary defense” is a fig leaf covering the development of technologies to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles above the atmosphere.
The belief is that the first country to have this reliably at scale breaks the “mutually assured destruction” paradigm that has governed nuclear weapons policy for decades. If the U.S. can send nuclear ballistic missiles, but can’t be hit by nuclear missiles, what stops them from just nuking anyone who disagrees with them?
ytpete
Intercepting a meteor falling to Earth may be not too unlike intercepting a ballistic missile in its terminal descent from high altitude.
red_admiral
I'm sure there's something behind deaths and disappearences of key rocket, defense, and nuclear scientists in Iran. Has been going on for a while.
For the US, my money is on "more evidence is needed". I could imagine the more "diverse" among the scientists deciding it's time for a career/employer change over the past year or so, though.
TruffleLabs
National Center for Health Statistics Deaths and Mortality
iamfromk
This looks like a case worthy of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
ndsipa_pomu
I blame the Trisolarians
coppsilgold
One more addition to the conspiracy theories:
The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months. NASA and other meteor experts can’t agree on what explains it.
In response to growing public interest, a NASA public affairs official said in a blog post at the end of March, “While it may seem like meteor reports and sightings have been more frequent recently, it is not out of the ordinary.” The post explained that from February to April, there is often a 10 to 30 percent increase in the number of extremely luminous meteors — and nobody is quite sure why.
Mr. Hankey said that this 10 to 30 percent increase was already baked into the American Meteor Society tally, and that it doesn’t explain the apparent doubling of fireball sightings in the year’s first quarter.
lesostep
Can you, please, also quote how this sightings are tallied? Is that an astronomical observation by same people or is that based on self-reporting citizens?
"People see more stuff in the sky" is a common sign for people getting more anxious about attacks from the sky. To my knowledge, first UFO reporting waves happened during cold war when people started to get paranoid about soviet spying.
JetSpiegel
They might be counting sightings over Israel, Iran, and GCC countries.
I have seen many social media videos of fireballs in the sky in the last few months.
nephihaha
The first true UFO wave was the phantom airship wave of the 1890s. But there were similar bouts before then.
zavec
Homestuck is finally happening?
zimpenfish
> The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months.
It feels reductive to point out that this has coincided with a massive increase in the number of small satellites with limited lifespans up there.
(And yes, you'd expect NASA and the AMS to have thought of that but I honestly wouldn't put it past them to be deliberately ignoring Starlink satellites given Musk's political power and petulance to people who cross him.)
onion2k
The scientists are being killed by space fireballs!? This is conspiracy bigger than I thought!
Melatonic
Surprised they don't mention any of the scientists and engineers that were on flight MH370 (disappearance still unsolved) from Freescale
anthk
Also, some plasma/antigravity researches like the Chinese-origin one in America, among others.
rbanffy
Did the missing ones, by any chance, manage to assemble interocitors?
ozten
Napkin Math by Sabine Hossenfelder:
- people working in space top secret research 20,000 (conservative estimate, probably much smaller)
- adult disappearances 1/50k to 1/100k per year
- demographics are stable, high earners, so more like 1/100k per year or less
- so for the pool of 20k, then 0.2 per year on average
- these disappearances are a 1:10,000 to 1:20,000 probability
- homicides made this situation even more unlikely 1:100,000
Conclusions: A conspiracy is highly unlikely, but the situation is very unlikely. Shrug.
lofaszvanitt
Ooooh, people with above average intelligence.... mmm, juicy bits for the otherworldy entities.... :D
Frieren
> Later on Monday, Comer said the string of deaths was unlikely to be a coincidence.
Release the rest of the Epstein files. This seems the kind of conspiracy that could be found there.
rickydroll
An update on this conspiracy theory, err, umm, mystery from that One true source of truth, J.D. Vance. err umm @DaveJorgenson
jagermo
Is there a polymarket bet that they have been abducted into some billionaire's lair? There is a lot of Bond-type villain vibe going around there.
xer0x
Odd, I saw this bubble up on social media this week as a tinfoil hat curiosity. I don't know what's real anymore.
contingencies
There's good news and bad news. Unfortunately they're the same news. Given the rapid dissolution of any sort of publicly verifiable 'news' outlet, and the abject commercialization of media, plus the doublespeak of politicians and businesses, the PR industry, self-censorship in response to cancel-culture and other divisive popular behavioral trends, and the replication crisis in science - it's not just you. It's everyone.
cucumber3732842
>Given the rapid dissolution of any sort of publicly verifiable 'news' outlet
When was the news ever publicly verifiable? If Walter Kronkiue said that the North Vietnamese shot at our naval vessels twice on two different days you had no way of even accessing alternative viewpoints and that the 2nd day was questionable, you just had to trust him.
Today with all the contrarians and competing alternate sources it's arguably better because if there's some smoking gun that something is BS it almost certainly will get talked about. It might be bullshit on both sides but at least it's there to look at if you want.
krapp
And how would you be able to publicly verify the competing alternate sources and the smoking gun? It's no different than the situation with old media, except there's more noise and disinformation, and everything is easier to fake.
Unless you personally are physically there with whatever necessary field expertise exists to run experiments or interrogate witnesses, you wind up having to trust somebody either way.
I mean the fact that the effect of all of this "alternative" media has been the complete dissolution of any kind of objective reality in favor of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, rather than holding power to account, should demonstrate that it isn't better.
cucumber3732842
Being able to see the evidince presented by the alternatives, the degree to which they're grasping at straws, the scope of their criticism, etc. you can get a handle on the general degree of legitimacy of the original reporting.
When some source says something and backs it up with numbers and everyone on the other side attacks the conclusion but not the numbers that says something about the numbers.
krapp
I think you're making the mistake of assuming the world works like an internet forum. You aren't going to be able to judge reality on the basis of rhetorical tricks or logical contradiction. Your implicit assumption that if "everyone on the other side attacks the conclusion but not the numbers" the numbers must be correct first assumes only two sides, and second doesn't actually say anything about "the numbers," only your perception of one side over the other.
Everyone who's been taken in by conspiracy theory and misinformation already thinks this way and it's why they'll believe the world is flat and the sky is held up by Nephilim and anyone who says otherwise is just attacking them and obviously not taking the "evidence" into account. The end result of this kind of thinking just winds up reinforcing your biases because in essence it's just vibes.
contingencies
I think a slightly more nuanced view is that while perhaps big name old media of yore had a presumption of authority, morals, and public responsibility and that probably meant some degree of trust was potentially warranted (though no doubt abused at times), with the commercial push toward tabloidism and the internet all of those corrective influences have vanished, such that the presumption of authority no longer has legs. In fact, most of them have effectively turned in to subscriber-only outlets, which makes them directly commercial and capitulates any public service notion.
https://www.amic.media/media/files/file_352_3490.pdf seems to be the best study. It seemingly suggests that public interest media and democracy have non-trivial association. Remove one and the other falls.
cucumber3732842
>I think a slightly more nuanced view is that
Nuanced positions put up a fight. Strawmen keel right over.
>while perhaps big name old media of yore had a presumption of authority, morals, and public responsibility and that probably meant some degree of trust was potentially warranted (though no doubt abused at times), with the commercial push toward tabloidism and the internet all of those corrective influences have vanished, such that the presumption of authority no longer has legs. In fact, most of them have effectively turned in to subscriber-only outlets, which makes them directly commercial and capitulates any public service notion.
Exactly. And once that trust is gone there's no incentive to care.
>https://www.amic.media/media/files/file_352_3490.pdf seems to be the best study. It seemingly suggests that public interest media and democracy have non-trivial association. Remove one and the other falls.
I don't distrust the study on it's face but this is basically industry group saying they're vital to society. Realtors will say the same thing about themselves too.
contingencies
Fair points though if you view it as a more of cry of desperate help in to the void from a dying industry than a self-promotional activity, then cast around for anyone else who could be reasonably expected to produce such a study and come up blank, then it's easier to take seriously.
Jamesbeam
It is good that there is a proper investigation, and I think it’s likely just a statistical anomaly.
My personal opinion is that scientists should be off-limits for any military as long as they are not directly involved in operational planning and execution in an active state of war.
That said, targeting and capturing scientists is a military policy with a long history.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/alsos-mission/
The United States and Israel have allegedly carried out the most attacks on (nuclear) scientists after WW II.
There is a rather extensive scientific discussion about the legality and morality of this kind of targeting.
https://www.legitimacyasatarget.com/books/drones/
The overall conclusion in the broader scientific context, though, is that this approach is not effective.
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501760341/all-...
Removing individual expertise may delay strategic asset acquisition, but targeting alone is unlikely to destroy a programme outright and could even increase a country’s desire to strengthen research and acquire even more expertise.
You can see good examples of this with how the Israelis fail horribly over and over, preventing Iran from acquiring weapons-grade nuclear material. They failed so hard that the President is telling the public that Iran was within weeks to have a functional nuclear weapon and has set the world economy on fire over this with millions all over the planet suffering right now as a direct consequence of that decision.
Just a few days ago, a Ukrainian electronics expert for drone tech was hit in his home with five Shahed drones by Russia.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russian-shahed-drone-h...
The result of his survival will likely be that more Ukrainians want to learn what he does and result in an even stronger drone electronics programme to gain a further advantage over Russia even quicker, especially in the midrange strike capabilities of the Ukrainians. If he had died, the same effect would have likely occurred. So touching this scientist / engineer was a huge long-term strategic error by the Russians.
Just like when the Ukrainians car-bombed Alexander Dugin’s daughter https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23139, which resulted long-term strategically in a Ukrainian brain drain by bullets behind ears.
https://acleddata.com/report/personal-payback-assassinations...
Regardless of my or your opinion on this, this practice will likely persist as part of the foreign policy toolkit for states aiming to prevent proliferation.
And if you allow the US and Israel, or Russia or the United Kingdom, who all did kill scientists, to follow this policy unpunished, you need also to respect that their adversaries have the same right to do so.
Which means US scientists will end up as targets. Reality is, it has never been easier to kill a person with drones without risking capture or even consequences for the assassin, so the US might get some of its own medicine, and the only one who can stop that is the average citizen by putting enough public pressure on this issue to force a policy change.
If you care about your scientists, start calling your representatives and make sure to tell them how unhappy you are with the US targeting acquisition and policy, and ask them what they are going to do about it if they want to deserve your vote.
F7F7F7
Turns out scientists die too?
ozten
> the concentration of deaths and disappearances within such a small, specialized field as defying ordinary probability.
The best conspiracy theory I've seen online is that top-secret energy/weapons plans were sold by a traitor, and these scientists were kidnapped to be the worker bees.
Terribly dark and implausible, but also, we are living through a storyline that writers wouldn't even consider a draft because it's too on-the-nose.
bawolff
I imagine it is difficult to get good work out of scientists at the point of a gun. With physical labour you can tell if someone is doing a good job, but with intellectual labour its much harder to tell if someone is intentionally being slow or if its a hard problem that is difficult to solve.
Cytobit
> defying ordinary probability
Improbable events do not defy probability.
poulpy123
Specialized fields such as property custodians, administrative employees and managers
deathlight
Now that's a fun one, where did you hear that from? Other ones I've seen include; tit for tat revenge for the assassination of Iranian nuke scientists; a global conspiracy of illuminati/masons/"jews" (defined so broadly as to be useless); chinese interdiction (kidnapping, a-la the reverse of the subplot in nolan's the dark knight film - that is essentially what you said); bankers who own everything and subvert everything to their interests (which remains stickily plausible to me); of course we can't forget our favorite: ancient aliens been doing all of this from the beginning. Anything to absolve people of confronting their own DNA and the predator/prey dichotomy that rules most life forms.
DANmode
Struggling to tell if you’re trolling,
or just often on a good one at this hour,
based on your other comments.
Anyway, did you fix the hiccups?
deathlight
Theres a lot of awesome fixes to hiccups that actually work if you do them right. One thing I've learned over the years is that most problems have an obvious fix that some people figured out ages ago and the reason you're late to the party of knowing is that after everyone else figured it out they decided not to tell you because then they could make a buck off of selling you the solution. Applies to so many things in our world.
DANmode
So…did you fix them?!
Still meandering without contribution, a bit.
anthk
Israel just lobbies with money, it's far more effective.
lyu07282
They assassinate truckloads of people all the time too though, Mossad operations in the west are usually not even investigated or reported by western media, they just quietly release agents back to Israel if they ever accidentally caught them. Some info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_espionage_in_the_Unite...
anthk
Given the '72 events at the Olympics, that's reasonable. Altough their colonialism, para-Nazism (Zionism) with tons of school brainwashing and the IDF war crimes are on par on the Islamic fundamentalism sickos with madrassas and the like. Different shades from the same turd.
Edit:, in '72, Munich attacks.
While everyone in the Mediterranean was trading, sharing and mating each other (especially under the Roman empire) boosting commerce, sales and culture -relatively speaking to what you could find in a tribe-, these backwards shepherds (both sides) want to bring the world back to the Bronze Age.
Gnostics at least got it better, as Arrians.
heikkilevanto
Why would FBI ever announce that they are investigating something? Is it that time of the year where they have to convince budget makers about their importance? Or are they trying to direct attention from something else? Epstein?
m3kw9
Something about ufo conspiracy theories.
Kaibeezy
Came here looking for the SC comments, was disappointed. (doorbell rings)
zimpenfish
A good rule of thumb is that whatever James Comer believes, believing the opposite is correct 99% of the time.
The man is, for want of a better word, a full-on Republican dipshit performing dipshittery in an attempt to get Trump to notice him.
(His wikipedia page is an excellent summary of his asshattery.)
panda-giddiness
I'm surprised this article is gaining traction on HN when it's propping up such obvious conspiratorial drivel. For a counterpoint I would recommend this article [1], but I'll summarize the main points here:
- The investigation concerns somewhere between four and a dozen people spanning nearly half a decade. A dozen people dying or disappearing over the course of 4 years is hardly the statistical anomaly the articles claims it to be.
- Despite attempts to link these scientists together, there really is no common thread. One person was a biologist, not a rocket scientist; and two of the "scientists" weren't even scientists at all.
- Many of these purported "mysterious" deaths are hardly that mysterious. Two likely died of natural causes, one was murdered by a former classmate, and one disappeared while hiking. Most of the others appeared to have suffered from psychological distress.
And look, I don't want to minimize these people. These deaths and disappearances are all tragedies. The families and friends deserve closure. But dragging them into the conspiracy theory circuit is not going to do them any favors. If anything, it will likely make matters worse.
And as a scientist myself, the administration's "concern" about missing scientists feels like a slap in the face. This administration has been more hostile towards us than any other in modern history. I'll leave the article with the last word because I couldn't have worded it any better.
> Ironically, America doesn’t seem to need much help when it comes to disappearing scientists. About 1,000 employees have been laid off from NASA’s JPL in the past few years. One senior scientist who is still there told my colleague Ross Andersen last October that he’d never seen the place so empty and lifeless. In the meantime, the Trump administration has repeatedly proposed cutting NASA’s science research funding in half, a plan that would surely lead to further loss of staff at JPL, not to mention the abandonment of probes that have been sent into our solar system.
> And while the FBI looks into potential foreign involvement in professors’ deaths at MIT and Caltech, the Trump administration says that it intends to halve the budget of the National Science Foundation, which in recent years has furnished those two schools with hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. Already, more than 40 percent of the NSF’s scientific staff have left or been fired.
> This is just a subset of the harms that have been done to the U.S. research enterprise since the start of 2025. In response, some top scientists have been getting up and walking out the door. Their absence can’t be blamed on China, Russia, or Iran. Maybe the White House should look into it.
---
[1] "The Single Dumbest Conspiracy Theory of 2026." The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientis...
f30e3dfed1c9
Came here to post this if it wasn't here already.
I'll point out, though, that it's still only April. Plenty of time for even dumber conspiracy theories to take hold!
xorgun
[dead]
golem14
[flagged]
imglorp
How many of the disappearances were defections?
ghstinda
Doesn't seem connected, but makes a nice film. I think ignorance is bliss and due to the current climate, many people checking out...
11 disappearances over 4 years and 4 states :
- 1 rocket scientist lost while hiking - 1 astrophysicist killed at home by someone arrested a few months before at his home with a gun - 1 physicist in another field killed without cause of death made public - 1 engineer in instrumentation killed also without the cause made public - 1 schizophrenic crank woman died by suicide - 1 plasma and nuclear scientist killed at home by a jealous former classmate who went just after on a mass killings spree - 1 pharmatical scientist found in a lake after missing - 1 military executive who left with only his gun and disappeared - 1 administrative employee walked from home and disappeared after leaving her car and personal phone behind - 1 decade year old retiree from the same laboratory who did the same - 1 property custodian from a totally different place also left with a gun and disappeared
Totally aliens https://img.astroawani.com/2014-03/51395638721_freesize.jpg